Du Pont flung up his hands as if the world had fallen in.
“Can you arrange a basket for three—cold fowl, tongue, and some pâté de foie gras, also champagne?”
“How many for—three?” cried M. du Pont, holding up three fingers. “Tenez!” and away he rushed.
In ten minutes the basket arrived, borne by a waiter; it was a capable-looking basket, and seemed heavy.
“At least, we shall not starve,” murmured Gaillard. “Charge it to M. le Prince, Du Pont. Adieu!” And he drove away in an open fly with the basket beside him, remembering, when it was too late, that he ought also to have ordered a box of cigars.
He met his companions in the Rue Mont Thabor; they had left the crémerie, and were walking up and down in the sun.
Then the trio, with the luncheon basket in their midst, drove off, and were deposited at the Gare du Nord, that dreary station with its multitudinous platforms and engines that do not whistle healthily, but toot mournfully with a suggestion of phantom horns.
Here in the hurry and hubbub the poet could express his ideas on the third-class tickets which Toto insisted on buying, without fear of Célestin overhearing his plaints.
“My dear Toto, do not do this disgraceful thing. Consider my position in the world, if you forget your own. Should anyone see me, mon Dieu! it will be all over Paris, and they will say my books are not selling. Already they are saying that the editions are being faked. I will go back, I will commit suicide——”